It's what you're thinking when you're not thinking what you should be thinking that's the REAL problem."

T

he principles involved in Complemation are many, but the explanation of the neologism is as follows: recently, the term “complementary medicine” was coined in order to describe a range of treatments, therapies and approaches to health and medicine that were previously labelled “alternative.” The thinking behind this appears to be that what was considered ‘alternative’ predominantly in the West was in fact a great deal older—in some cases thousands of years older—than current, pharmacologically-based, mechanistic methods and models applied in general here.

In this spirit, the recognition that ‘modern’ teaching methods have come to a similar cross- roads is self-evident to anyone that cares to look even for a few moments at the state of affairs in modern education.

The word ‘Education’ originally meant ‘to draw out of someone something that they don’t know that they know’.

The modern, industrialised worlds’ education systems are based on the same model as that which created the industrialised society – the factory, where processes are split up into local- ised tasks and where those operating them often have no knowledge or understanding of any of the other tasks, or indeed the overall process; where items are grouped according to their date of manufacture; and the emphasis is largely on ever-increasing output, and hardly at all with the quality of that output.

‘Complemation’, the word, is comprised then, of ‘complementary’, and ‘education’. It seeks, in its manifestation — at whatever level — to engender a situation where there is no opposition to any other system, however prevalent or dominant. Instead, it seeks to run alongside it, providing a support where needed, also simultaneously allowing a parallel stream of intention, activity, exploration and understanding leading to wisdom to emerge, in a way dictated by the appropriate, the necessary, and that which lies beyond mere data, information, and unconscious existence.

Academies for Complemation are envisaged as flexible, yet with solid, dependable, time-tested guidelines; sized according to requirements of the present situation in preference to squeezing the world into pre-formed presupposed boxes; and having the innate ability to utilise any and all techniques, practices, methods, structures, which are ‘right’ for this present set of circumstances now— no matter which source they may come from.

By applying “the right tool for the job” at the right moment, we are acting in accordance with principles far removed from the idea that the tool may dictate the way we must operate in the world. At the unconscious level, this is always the case, it is true, but this is not the realm in which we believe true learning operates, much less real life.

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reativity is really, at root, the openness to what is, and not what we wish to make it based on some whim—itself the result of an automatic chain of associations. That openness is the ground for life itself to enter and manifest, and the fruits of that will be of a quality not often enjoyed by those who have not even seen past the windowless basement, let alone know of the existence of other floors in the building.

Complemation seeks to facilitate the development of individuals as microcosms of groups, and to allow the development of permanent acquisition of developmental stages—largely dispensing with the ‘entertainment’ of access to temporary ‘states’. This is real learning; a transformative process which arises out of trust in that understanding is a combination of knowledge + action.

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T

he impetus for the formation of the Academies for Complemation is the result of a goal relatively recently recognised—but which was always there.

“ ‘‘‘‘‘‘‘ ˮ Is the first truly conscious and directed manifestation of that impulse, for which I am most profoundly, humbly, and terrifyingly endlessly grateful.